Washington Post journalist detained in Iran reportedly indicted

April 11, 2013: Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American correspondent for the Washington Post has been imprisoned for over a year with charges of espionage.
(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

A Washington Post journalist detained in Iran has been indicted and will stand trial, Iran’s official news agency reported Wednesday.

The official IRNA news agency, quoting Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi, said that Jason Rezaian, the newspaper's bureau chief in Tehran since 2012, had been indicted. He is an Iranian-American who holds dual citizenship.

The news agency did not disclose what charges Rezaian, who has been held since July 22, faces. However, the report said he will stand trial in Iran's Revolutionary Court, which mostly hears cases involving security offenses.

State Department spokesman Marie Harf said at a Wednesday afternoon briefing, "We're looking into those reports" and added there was “no independent confirmation.”

Last October, Iran released Rezaian's journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, an Iranian reporter for the Abu Dhabi-based English-language newspaper The National. She also had been held since July.

"We still do not know what charges the Iranian authorities have brought against our correspondent Jason Rezaian, but we hope the referral of his case to a Revolutionary Court represents a step forward toward Jason's prompt release," said a statement from Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post.

"This step gives Iran's judiciary an opportunity to demonstrate its fairness and independence by determining that the charges are baseless. We call on Iran to make these charges public, to allow Jason access to a lawyer and to bring a swift and just resolution of a six-month-long nightmare that has been extremely difficult for Jason and his family."

The report by the official IRNA news agency came the same day as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif before talks with world powers resume over the Islamic Republic's contested nuclear program.

It wasn't immediately clear if the two events were connected, though Zarif earlier said he hoped the case against reporter Jason Rezaian could be "resolved."

"We will have to wait for the judiciary to move forward, but we will try to provide all the humanitarian assistance that we could," Zarif told journalists in Geneva. "We hope that this issue could be resolved but unfortunately there are judicial issues involved which the judiciary has to deal with."